From His Heart

Speaker 1

Can you discern real truth in a world of lies? Let's see how your discerning mind and heart are working. Here's Pastor Jeff Shreve.

Speaker 2

Christians need to be strengthened by the truth. And if you go to a church where they're not preaching the word of God, you need to find another place to go. You don't need to subject yourself to a place that doesn't preach the word of God.

Listen, nobody's immune to bad stuff coming in your ears. Just like you wouldn't go and take your family to a restaurant where they serve bad food.

And so don't go to a church that is not giving you the truth. Real love. Real.

Speaker 1

From his heart. Well, what a way to start a new year. Happy New Year from all of us at From His Heart. Today we're going to have a sobering reminder that will prepare us all for what this year will throw at all of us.

You know, it doesn't seem like that long ago you could turn on the news. And though it might be a little slanted one way or the other, most of the time you could still get a fairly accurate picture of the news if you were marginally discerning. But now most news agencies are more interested in slanting and spinning the news one way or the other way. Who do you trust? It seems as though truth isn't really that important in our world today. And AI fakes are as dangerous as they come. They can and will wreak havoc in the truth.

This year, what are we going to do? This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, who today presents part two of the lesson we began last year called the Truth in a World of Lies. Open your Bible to Ephesians, chapter 4. Here again is Pastor Jeff.

Speaker 2

Now Jesus. When he was before Pontius Pilate, he said, all who are of the truth, listen to me. He said to him, I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. All who are of the truth, listen to me. And Pilate said in response, what is truth? Well, the truth in a world of lies is critically important. I want to share with you three discoveries about the truth. We must be grounded in the truth because there is only one true north. Everything else is false.

So, three discoveries about the truth. Number one, the truth is that which comes from God. John 1:14 states, "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us when we beheld his glory. Glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Truth is that which comes from God. The Son of God is the truth. Jesus said of himself, "I am the way." John 14:6 continues, "I am the way and the truth." He didn't say, "I am a way and a truth and a life." He said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." The Son of God is the truth.

But not only is the Son of God the truth, the Word of God is the truth. Jesus said in his great high priestly prayer, John 17:17, while praying to his Father, "Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth." So, if you want to know something about an issue that's going on in our culture today, where do you find the truth? You have to find it in the Word, because the Word is truth. Therefore, the truth is that which comes from God.

The second discovery is that the truth is that which is opposed by the devil. He is the enemy of the truth. In John chapter 8, when Jesus was having an argument with the Jewish religious leaders, he said, "You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe me." The devil is a liar and the father of lies.

How does the devil work with these subtle lies? He uses lies to appeal to people's desires. Think about what he did with Jesus. When Jesus was in the desert being tempted by the devil, he said, "Jesus, look at all the kingdoms of this world." He took him to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of this world in a vision. The devil said, "All this has been given to me. I can give it to whomever I wish. I'll give it to you if you'll just bow down and worship me." Here’s the temptation: "Jesus, you don't have to go to the cross. You don't have to suffer. If you bow down and worship me, you can bypass all the suffering, you can bypass the cross."

Not only does he use lies to appeal to people's desires, but he also uses lies to make people believe that truth is subjective. There is subjective truth and there is objective truth. What's the difference? Subjective truth is truth in the subject. Objective truth is truth in the object. That's true for anyone, anywhere, regardless of where you live, regardless of the color of your skin, regardless of whether you're a multi-billionaire or you have 10 cents in your pocket; it's just true. It's objectively true.

One of the things that you'll find the devil will say when it comes to absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth. Everything is subjective. Everything is based on a person's perspective, feelings, or opinions. Absolute, objective truth has nothing to do with your feelings. Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again from the dead. That is a truth, a fact of history. If you believe it, it changes you. If you don't believe it, it doesn't change the fact that it really happened. You will pay a high price for disbelieving something because whether you believe it or not doesn't make it true or false; it just means the consequences are different for you.

The devil wants people to believe that truth is all relative, that it's all subjective. He uses lies, thirdly, to destroy people's lives. That's his ultimate goal. Jesus said, "The thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy." He is the original Terminator. He never stops; he just comes after you and me to steal, to kill, and to destroy. When you become a Christian, he doesn't say, "Oh, I lost that one; I guess I'll move on to somebody else." No, even as a Christian, what does he want to do? He wants to steal your peace, steal your joy, get you to live in guilt and shame, destroy your family, destroy your witness, and kill everything good God wants to do in your life. Your life, he comes to destroy.

Now, what's at stake with believing the devil's lies? What's at stake in accepting the world's definition of truth? Your eternity is hanging in the balance. If you believe a lie concerning Jesus, concerning his word, concerning salvation, and you die believing a lie, then you're going to pay the price for that. Jesus said, "Unless you believe I am he, unless you believe I am the great I am, you will all die in your sins." When you die in your sins, you spend forever separated from God.

The truth is that which comes from God. The truth is that which is opposed by the devil. And number three, the truth is that which we desperately need to speak and share. We are called to be the Lord's witnesses. What does a witness do? A witness gets on the witness stand and swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. Yes. You put your hand on the Bible, or it used to be that in America you'd put your hand on the Bible. A witness doesn't have to make stuff up; he just tells what he saw, what he experienced. He tells what happened to him.

Jesus told those guys in Luke chapter 24, "You are witnesses of these things, so you proclaim salvation in my name, that repentance for the forgiveness of sins shall be proclaimed in my name." You are witnesses, and you have the job of going out and being my ambassadors. "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be my witnesses." They were his witnesses, and every single one of them, save John, paid with their lives for being his witness.

The world desperately needs to hear the truth. Isaiah 59 states, "Truth has fallen in the street and honesty cannot come in." Truth is missing in so many pulpits; truth is missing. Preachers don't preach the truth. They used to get in the pulpit and say, "Thus says the Lord." They would open the Bible and say, "Thus says the Lord." Then they started to say, "Well, thus says the church." Eventually, they began to say, "Well, it seems to me." We don't do that. We speak the truth in love, and our world needs to be confronted with the truth.

People need to see, like never before, that they're sinners in a very precarious place. As Jonathan Edwards preached, "Sinners in the hands of an angry God." Does God love every single person? Yes. Does God want to judge? No. Will God judge? Yes. If you're not found in Christ, you're going to be found in trouble. Jesus is either your savior or he's your judge.

I was listening to a sermon just yesterday, and the title of the sermon was "The Most Hated Doctrine in the World." The doctrine that is most hated in the world is the doctrine of depravity—the doctrine that says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death." What do people get mad about? They get mad if you call them sinners. They get mad if they're confronted with their sin. Jesus said, "And this is the testimony, the witness, that light has come into the world, and men love the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil." They hate the light and don't come to the light lest their deeds should be exposed.

Jesus said in John chapter seven, "The world cannot hate you, but it hates me. Why? Because I testify against it that its deeds are evil." Think about it: why did they crucify Jesus? He is truth personified. He is love personified. Yet they nailed him to a tree. Why would you do that to the God-man who is love in the flesh? It's because love in the flesh told you that you were a sinner in need of him, in need of saving, and they didn't want to hear that.

Our world needs to be confronted with the truth. First John chapter one, verse eight says, "If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Verse ten continues, "If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." In our world today, people are swimming in a sea of lies. They say, "It's just your truth; whatever your truth is, that's good enough." It doesn't really matter because God is just willy-nilly on everything. You can believe anything you want, live any way you want. It doesn't matter; when you die, you'll go to heaven. That's a lie. Hell is not a place where you're there for a week or two; you're there forever and ever and ever. It's terrible. The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. Our world needs to be confronted with the truth.

Secondly, Christians need to be strengthened by the truth. Let's look at the passage in a little more depth. This is more of a topical message than an expository message. In Ephesians 4:11, it says, "What did God do for the church?" He gave some as apostles and some as prophets. Those were foundational (Ephesians 2:20), the foundation of the apostles and prophets. That was the initial offices that the Lord set up the church with. When Jesus ascended to heaven, he had the apostles preaching and the prophets preaching, getting direct revelation from God because the New Testament hadn't been written yet. Those are foundational offices.

Then he says, "He gave some as evangelists." God has given to the church pastors, shepherds, and teachers who teach the word of God. What is the point? Verse 12 states, "For the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ." The goal is to equip the saints to do ministry. Verse 13 continues, "Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ." How do you grow, Lord? It's when the pastor takes the word of God, lifts up the Son of God, and shares the word of God. The word of God is our milk, our bread, our meat. That's how you grow strong in the Lord. When you grow strong in the Lord, you become a mature Christian.

Verse 14 states, "Then you're no longer children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming." The devil comes with his lies, and you are able to recognize, "Ah, that's not right." You become a Berean Christian. These were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for when they heard the word preached, they received it with great eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. Is this true? Who are they listening to? The Apostle Paul. Can you imagine that? Paul comes to preach one Sunday, and you're like, "Paul, you gave us a lot of good stuff, but I'm going to go home and check you out, boy. Make sure you got this right." That's what they did. That's a good thing. You need to do that with me and with anybody that stands in the pulpit. Is this true? Is this right? Because as the Bible says, many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Then verse 15, our key verse, states, "Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ." How do we do that? Through speaking the truth in love. Christians need to be strengthened by the truth. If you go to a church where they're not preaching the word of God, you need to find another place to go. You don't need to subject yourself to a place that doesn't preach the word of God. Nobody's immune to bad stuff coming into your ears. Just like you wouldn't take your family to a restaurant that serves bad food that will make you sick, you would say, "No, we're not going to go there anymore." So, don't go to a church that is not giving you the truth.

Christians need to be strengthened by the truth. Thirdly, Christians need to be speaking the truth in love. That's important. Those two things go together. We speak the truth in love. Warren Wiersbe says, "Truth without love is brutality." You can take the word of God and just beat people over the head with it, and they don't sense any kind of love, grace, or compassion. You bam, bam, bam. Truth without love is brutality. But love without truth is hypocrisy; it's not real love.

In our world today, in so many churches, they're bending over backwards to accommodate the culture. As one pastor said, he had to preach on Romans one, which talks about sexual immorality, homosexuality, and depravity. He was just in anguish, saying, "Ah, this is so hard to preach this message." I'm like, "What is wrong with you? You just take the word of God and disseminate it. You're a delivery boy. Whatever God says, that's what you preach." It doesn't have to be hard. You don't have to be in awe. If they're in sin, they're in sin. If the shoe fits, wear it.

I never have a problem with it; I never even think about it. Now, I want to be kind about it. I don't want to beat people over the head with it. But if you're getting ready to walk off a cliff, I don't want to just say, "Hey, you may want to consider that you don't take another step." No, you want to tell people, "Hey, you're going the wrong way; you need to turn around." Because if you don't turn around, you're going to spend forever in hell.

There was a book that was really popular back in the early 70s called "I'm Okay, You're Okay." Some of you remember that. Everyone left thinking, "Oh, I'm okay, you're okay, we're all okay." My pastor preached a sermon titled "I'm Okay, You're Okay."

Speaker 1

Bull.

Speaker 2

You're not okay. I'm not okay. We're not okay. All sin and fall short of the glory of God. The wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, we have salvation in Jesus. So we tell people the truth. Because the Gospel is good news. But good news only makes sense when you understand the bad news. And the bad news is this: you're on the highway to hell. And the only way to get off is by turning around and giving your heart and life to Jesus Christ.

Listen, it is critical that we receive the truth. That we spend time in the book so that we can know the truth, so that we can have our senses trained to discern good and evil, as it says in Hebrews 5:14. We take in the milk of the Word, the bread of the Word, the meat of the Word, and we grow with respect to salvation. And then we stand up for the truth. We speak the truth in love.

At school, we stand up for the truth. And I know it's hard. I know I was in high school; I didn't become a Christian until I was a senior in high school. Toward the end of my senior year, it would have been really hard for me, had I become a Christian when I was a freshman, to stay firm in my relationship with the Lord. Because all my basketball buddies were not Christians. And so you speak the truth to them because you love them. That's what's critical. That's what's key. If we love people, we're going to tell them the truth. We speak the truth in love.

Because one day the Lord is coming back, and he's coming back as judge. He's going to deal out retribution to those who do not know God, to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And these will pay the penalty of eternal separation away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. God doesn't want that for anyone. He wants people to respond to the truth, to receive the truth, and to be saved.

Speaker 1

Have you done that? Have you responded to God's call in your life in repentance and faith? If so, you are a child of God with new and maturing discernment into the things of God that will be in sharp, easy to see contrast with the lies of the world.

Today you heard part two of the message, the truth in a world of lies, to get us started on the right foot this new year regarding what should be important to us and help focus us this next year to proclaim verifiable truth to a dark world. And you can listen again or download a free MP3 of the broadcast. To be a blessing to another person that you think should hear this, just go to fromisheart.org and click the listen link.

As From His Heart opens a new chapter today, beginning our 21st year of broadcasting ministry, we remain convicted more than ever of the call that God gave Pastor Jeff two decades ago to begin a broadcast ministry that would grow as much as God wanted it to, to reach as many people as God wanted us to reach, and use the resources that God provides through our listeners. Pastor Jeff receives no income from this ministry. He is strictly a volunteer and he is also a faithful monthly supporter.

It is crystal clear that Pastor Jeff was clear in what God called him to do. All the glory goes to God, of course, but God also places on people's hearts the desire to help us and come alongside. As you support From His Heart, we can continue to expand to an increasingly dark and hurting world.

For your gift of support today, this brand new year to From His Heart, we'd like to say thank you by sending you Pastor Jeff's new year-long daily devotional book called "The Heart Is God's Home." He and 38 other pastors put together 365 days of inspiring and convicting devotions to touch your heart and allow you to commune with God's heart. To get your copy of this beautiful keepsake quality book, call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-BIBLE) or go online to fromisheart.org to make your request.

As we step into 2026, we're praying that God would bless you richly for the difference you're making in the Kingdom. I'm Larry Nobles, wishing you a happy New Year and trusting you'll be here on Friday when once again Pastor Jeff will open God's Word and share with real truth, real love, and real hope from God's heart.

From His Heart is the listener-supported broadcast ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve, speaking the truth in love to a lost and hurting world. Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Find out more about that when you go to fromisheart.org.